WHERE SOLDIERS LIE
by
John Wilson
WHERE SOLDIERS LIE
By John Wilson
Copyright 2006 by John Wilson.
Published by John Wilson, 2011 at Smashwords
Where Soldiers Lie was first published in hardcover in 2006 by Key Porter Books.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment. The author worked hard to make the story as entertaining and enjoyable as possible. If you would like to share this book with someone else, please consider purchasing an additional copy as a gift. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, please consider owning your own copy. Thank you for appreciating and valuing the author's work.
Author wishes to acknowledge the assistance of a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts in the preparation of this work
Other eBooks by John Wilson. Free samples are available for all titles.
North with Franklin: The Lost Journals of James Fitzjames
To discover more about John and his books, visit his Website or Blog.
For my parents and the lost world I never knew.
Queen Victoria’s Jubilee
Sunday, June 27, 1897
The man absent-mindedly scratched the hard knot of scar tissue beneath his left arm where the crocodile had opened his side to the bone forty years before. Was the beast still alive, he wondered? It had been young and inexperienced when it had attacked him and it was said that they could live to be over a hundred years old. He chuckled—it would probably outlive him.
Jack O’Hara was sitting on the stone steps below a small temple, gazing over the Ganges River as it wound across the northern plains of India. When the rains arrived in a week or two, bringing floodwaters from the distant Himalayas, the river would be a two-mile-wide, churning, muddy torrent; but now the water was low, exposing whale backs of sand and mud separated by a weave of sluggish channels.
The river was just as he remembered it: pelicans beat their wings over the water, herding small fish into schools they could scoop into their brightly-coloured beak pouches; cranes stood hunched forward like old men in formal waistcoats; metallic kingfishers flashed down on unsuspecting prey; and half-wild village dogs scavenged in the shallows.
Humans, too, went about their business in the river. Laundresses beat clothes on rocks with large swinging motions that sent fine, glistening sprays of water curving upward in the sunlight. Old men brushed their teeth with crushed twigs or ritually bathed, cupping their hands and pouring the holy water over their heads. A mounted British officer—a scarlet wound on the dun-coloured scene—trotted diagonally across a sandbar in the foreground.
The river hadn’t changed since that tragic summer when Jack was barely sixteen. Only the city of Cawnpore behind him was different. Now the railway ran alongside the Grand Trunk Road, connecting all the British stations from Calcutta in the east to Peshawar, nestled against India’s western border with Afghanistan. Burned-out bungalows, shops and offices had been rebuilt and new army parade grounds laid out with military precision. General Wheeler’s pitiful entrenchment had long vanished, replaced by the red brick walls of All Souls Memorial Church. The entrenchment well, where so many brave men had risked their lives for a cool drink of water, and the sepulchral well were both filled in. Quiet gardens and an elaborate monument—overdone and ostentatious, Jack thought—marked the site of the Bibighar and its own well of horrors. In fact, the only well still serving its original purpose was the one in Aunt Katherine’s garden. There, a bullock mindlessly plodded the same circular path that its ancestor had generations before.
Jack often thought of his memory as a kind of well. Like a well it provided something good, and Jack treasured his memories of Alice, Tommy and Hari, and of his long-ago childhood in the Canadian forests. But just as the bottom of a well is dark and dangerous, there were places in Jack’s memory that were frightening; places where he tried not to fall.
Nevertheless, despite his best efforts, his mind often refused to cooperate. On these occasions, his memories would drag him back to the dreadful events of 1857. Thoughts of the crocodile were carrying him back now, not just to that moment of terror in the frothy, bloodstained water when the beast had ripped his flesh, but to the weeks that had led up to it—weeks of confusion, fear and tragedy. But also weeks of incredible courage and strength. Weeks that had determined the man whom Jack would become.
PART 1
The Vultures Gather
Tuesday, May 12, 1857—Dawn
Jack almost fell over the small pile of chapattis sitting incongruously at the top of the verandah steps. At the time he thought little of it, simply that one of the servants had carelessly set down the five round flatbreads—the staple of every Indian meal—while he had undertaken some chore and forgotten about them. It was only later, after all the bloodshed and horror, that their presence took on a darker significance.
Jack stretched luxuriously and took in a deep breath of air, a rich tapestry of fragrances—woodsmoke mingled with jasmine from the garden and cardamom and garam masala from the kitchen. Jack had come to love these scents, but they were warm smells. Sometimes he longed for the cool odour of pine needles or maple syrup.
Although it was already warm, the stifling, heavy heat of midday had not yet descended. It was the perfect time to go riding. As if to confirm Jack’s thought, a British officer, resplendent in his red uniform, cantered past, equipment jangling as his horse’s hooves thumped on the hard-packed dirt road.
Jack descended the steps and glanced around the large garden. It was enclosed on three sides by a bedraggled hedge of prickly pear cactus and a water-filled moat that was supposed to deter snakes but in which Jack had seen cobras, mambas and the small, deadly krait, happily swimming.
The water in the moat came from the far corner of the garden, beside the row of whitewashed huts that constituted the servants’ quarters. A bored bullock plodded in circles around a deep well—a bowrie, Jack thought, practising his Hindi—drawing up an endless supply of water skins which were tipped into the ditch by an equally bored old man.
After its attempt to deter the snakes, the water was channeled through a flower garden filled with roses, hyacinths and oleanders and on to the kitchen garden where a few wilted peas and beans struggled against the heat. Finally, what was left of the water trickled in rivulets through the small orchard of banana, guava and mango trees.
As Jack strolled around to the stables, he reached up and plucked a small banana and began peeling it. He would have preferred a mango, but they weren’t ripe. Jack loved mangos—the oily sweetness of the soft orange flesh and the way the juice poured out over his chin and hands when he bit into one. Jack’s Aunt Katherine did not approve. Mangos were not a proper fruit like firm English apples or pears.
At the stables, behind the house, Australian whinnied in happy recognition. Jack had been in India for a year now and his pony was one of the few bright spots in his new life. Without the morning and evening rides, exploring the sun-baked countryside surrounding Cawnpore; both horse and boy would have gone mad.
Australian was named after the famous Derby winner, West Australian, the only horse to win the three classic races, the Derby, St. Leger and the Two Thousand Guineas Stakes, in one season. Not that Australian looked anything like a thoroughbred racehorse. He was a blue roan pony with a dark face and black mane and tail, and a wicked sense of humour. He liked little more than playing tricks on the humans around him, his favourite being to knock Jack’s hat into the river whenever they stopped for a drink. Australian had been a gift from Jack’s Uncle James—a vain attempt to help Jack settle into this strange world.
Australian had helped Jack come to know Cawnpore and its surroundings, but he had never fully settled in. He had little in common with the Europeans in the cantonment. A childhood spent roaming the Canadian wilderness, hunting everything from deer to squirrels and pulling glistening trout from the streams and lakes, had given him an independence and flexibility far beyond his age, and this did not sit well with the unforgiving, formal life his aunt was continually trying to mould him into.
Aunt Katherine, Uncle James and all the other English memsahibs and sahibs were insufferably stuffy and only concerned with appearances. The rigid European society frustrated Jack immensely. He despised the shallow posturing of his aunt and her friends and the unthinking arrogance of their offspring. He felt more at ease with Australian or the ragged children of his aunt and uncle’s servants than in the bungalow’s formal dining room, where he had to struggle to remember which fork to use and speak politely to all manner of crushingly boring adults. Sometimes it was hard to remember that India was his country, too. He had been born here sixteen years before.
Jack’s Irish father, Major Montgomery O’Hara of the Eighty-fourth Regiment of Foot, had spent most of his early life in India, leading his soldiers in countless bloody but forgotten battles against Indian princes resisting the spread of the British Empire. Like many lonely officers, he had taken an Indian mistress—bibis, they were called. Unlike most, he had fallen in love with and married his. This open declaration of love across such different cultures had alienated the pair from both their families, and Jack’s arrival had done nothing to heal the rift.
So Major O’Hara had resigned his commission and retreated half way around the world to seek his fortune in Canada West. Life had been hard there for Montgomery and his young Indian wife, but they had persevered. Montgomery had not made a fortune but he and Jack’s mother had adapted and given Jack a happy childhood.
In the spring of 1856, Jack’s parents had contracted smallpox and died, leaving their orphaned son to be shipped back to his only close relatives—his aunt and uncle in the European cantonment at Cawnpore, on the banks of the Ganges River.
A tear stung Jack’s eye at the thought of his parents. He missed them horribly, but what disturbed him even more was that they were fading from his memory. He could still picture his father’s rugged smile and his mother’s careworn frown, but the sharp edges of recollection were becoming dull. He was beginning to have difficulty recapturing the exact tone of his mother’s voice as she sang him to sleep with a Hindi nursery rhyme, or the feel of his father’s hand on his arm as he steadied the old musket for target practice. Slowly but surely, he was losing them. One day his remembrance of them would be flat, no more special than any of the countless, inconsequential daily events that stuck in his memory for no exceptional reason.
“You will be riding forth, sahib?”
Jack turned to see a small, dark figure standing nearby, his head inclined questioningly.
“Yes, Hari. As I do every morning.”
The head bobbed in a strange way that could equally mean yes or no. “Then I shall be preparing Australian.”
Hari was the stable boy and the closest thing Jack had to a friend in the household. As far as Jack could tell, Hari was near him in age. He had spent two years at the La Martiniere School in Lucknow learning English and had mastered the language, although he had never managed to lose the singsong cadence that marked his speech or his rather cumbersome, old-fashioned way of saying things. But they could communicate perfectly well. Jack had picked up the rudiments of Hindi from his mother and Hari had taken on the role of polishing Jack’s grasp of the language. In the heat of the afternoon when the Europeans sought out shade to lie in, Hari and Jack would sit on the verandah and talk, switching almost effortlessly from English to Hindi and back. Jack told Hari about Canada and Hari explained the complexities of the Hindu caste system.
Jack was fascinated by the multitudes of caste levels and the rigidity with which distinctions were enforced. The four main castes—Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaisya and Sudra—were easy enough to grasp, but within each there was a bewildering array of subgroups that determined what job a person could do, whom they could touch and whom they could marry. For example, Brahmans, the highest caste, could not eat food prepared by non-Brahmans and if they were touched by a person of lower caste, had to undergo complex rituals of purification. At the bottom of the pile were the untouchables, who had no caste and performed all the most disgusting jobs.
The caste system explained the vast numbers of servants around Aunt Katherine’s bungalow—house servants, garden servants, kitchen boys and horse tenders, each with specific duties that could not be changed. Aunt Katherine had a host of maids who dressed and groomed her and Uncle James even had one servant whose only job, as far as Jack could see, was to shave him each morning.
Despite Hari’s explanations, caste was something Jack couldn’t understand. He had been brought up to do things for himself and didn’t think he would ever get used to the servants drifting around the house like silent ghosts, hovering at his shoulder ready to undertake the slightest task he might wish.
Yet, sometimes Jack wondered if the social restrictions of European society were any better. Sometimes, he dreamed of escape—of wrapping his head in a turban-cloth (pagri) donning a loin cloth (dhoti) and disappearing into the bazaar. His mother had given him skin dark enough not to attract notice and he could speak more Hindi than his aunt had learned in a lifetime in the country, but the caste system would most likely let him down. Its intricate complexities would rapidly get him into trouble for infringing some custom or rule, unless he went as an untouchable, a person everyone else avoided. The very idea would have shocked his aunt and uncle, but that was one of its attractions.
“Australian is ready, sahib.” Hari appeared out of the stable, leading Jack’s pony fully kitted out in its tack.
“Thank you, Hari.” Jack took the reins and moved round to mount Australian. “Oh, Hari, did you forget some chapattis on the verandah?”
Hari’s silence made Jack look around Australian’s neck. His friend looked worried.
“What is it?”
“Not good. Very bad.”
“What do you mean? They’re just chapattis.”
“Not just chapattis.” Hari walked around Australian’s head. “They have meaning.”
“What do they mean?”
Hari hesitated for a long moment. “Sahib, they mean trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?” Frustration at Hari’s enigmatic answers began to show in Jack’s voice. “Tell me what they mean.”
Hari sighed. “Long ago, before the British came, a raja—prince—who desired to know if he could go to war, used chapattis. He was sending them out from his palace to be bitten.”
“Bitten?”
“Yes. If a man received chapattis he bit to show loyalty to the raja. Then he was making more and sending on. If the man did not want to go to war, he did not bite or send on. When the raja heard how far chapattis were going, he knew who would answer his call to war. Much biting was good.”
“But that’s just a story from the old days. And these chapattis weren’t bitten.”
“But Nana Sahib at Bithur wishes once more to be raja. He is Mahratta, descendant of mighty kings at the time of Akbar the Great. Nana wishes those times to come again. He has, I think, sent out the chapattis.”
“But he can’t go to war! He lives in a rundown palace and only has a few soldiers for ceremonials to impress the peasants in the surrounding villages.”
“Young sahib, these are strange days. Armies can come from many places. Do not touch the chapattis.”
“I won’t, but I still don’t see what harm they can do. Nana has no power any more. Everyone says so.”
“You are most correct, sahib. Enjoy your morning ride.”
Hari retreated into the stable, leaving Jack to thoughtfully mount Australian and trot out onto the road. The conversation had left Jack feeling strange. Was Hari keeping things from him? Why were the days strange? Jack sighed. Every day here was strange. Mysterious chapattis travelling around the countryside at night! It would be funny if only Hari hadn’t looked so worried.
* * *
Cawnpore was a mess of a city, spread haphazardly along the southwest bank of the Ganges. In reality it was several distinct towns.
Jack lived with his Aunt Katherine and Uncle James in one of the collection of spacious, immaculately kept bungalows in the cantonment. This was where army officers, East India Company employees and European traders lived their sheltered lives. The only dark-skinned faces seen on the cantonment’s wide, tree-lined streets were servants or favoured Eurasian employees—or Jack.
The cantonment occupied the best position in town, a long swath perched on the high bank of the river where any cooling breeze off the water could be felt. Behind this oasis of transplanted British civilization loomed the packed and filthy native city. Narrow alleys—clogged with stalls, rickshaws and aimlessly wandering cattle—teemed with life. Shopkeepers bawled the benefits of their produce, scribes scribbled official letters on tiny folding desks, beggars whined at any passing wealth and skinny, near-naked holy men flitted through the mass of humanity like underfed ghosts. The air was filled with noise, dust and the smells of every form of human activity. On his rare visits to these streets, Jack imagined that medieval London might have smelled the same way before toilets and sewers were introduced.
Surrounding the native city were the infantry and artillery lines. For the native infantry and cavalry—sepoys and sowars—these gave the impression of bustling villages with hordes of half-naked children running between the rows of rough huts where the soldier’s families lived. The European lines consisted of low, verandahed barracks set in open expanses of swept parade ground.
On the northwestern edge of town sat the squat, brick treasury and magazine. The city was connected to the northeast bank of the river and the Lucknow road by a bridge of boats.
No physical barriers prevented people moving from one area of town to another, but most were content—for religious, racial and cultural reasons—to stay within their own prescribed world.
Jack and Australian had explored it all, and many of the scattered villages up and down the Grand Trunk Road as well, but their favourite spot was in the open spaces by the river. The air was slightly cooler and cleaner here and there was always activity to watch. The Ganges was both a place to wash bodies and clothes, and the most sacred site in India. The mere touch of its water could cleanse a person’s soul of the most terrible crime.
Jack rode down the narrow ravine that cut through the river’s high bank near his aunt’s bungalow. He emerged at Sati Chowra Ghat, a series of stone steps that allowed access to the river. When the water was high and lapping at the bottom steps, Sati Chowra was often crowded with people washing and praying. But now, in the dry heat of May, the water was far from the bank and the steps were deserted.
Jack turned Australian past the foot of the small Hardeo Temple to the Hindu god Shiva and splashed his way west through the shallows. At the bridge of boats, he regained the bank. He had intended to skirt the native city and explore the countryside to the west, but the sight of a solitary figure, sitting on a low wall, made him rein in. It was a girl about his age, dressed in immaculately pressed riding clothes. Her long dark hair was held in a tight bun and her left hand lazily held the reins of a piebald pony.
It was unusual enough to see a woman out on her own in this culture that worshipped the idea of womanhood and cherished, pampered and protected any individual considered to be close to the ideal, but two additional things made Jack stop so fast he almost fell out of his saddle. This girl, even seen only in profile, was beautiful, and her skin was nearly as dark as his own.
As Jack recovered his balance, the girl looked at him with two of the deepest, darkest eyes he had ever seen.
“What are you doing here?” Jack blurted out the first thing that crossed his mind.
A gleam of anger flashed into the eyes. “I wasn’t aware that this was private property. And what business is it of yours anyway?”
“N…none,” Jack stammered. “It’s just…I mean…you shouldn’t be out alone.”
“Should I not?” The glare turned to smile. “And why would that be?”
“It’s not…” Jack searched for the right word, “seemly.” Mentally he kicked himself. Stupid! He sounded just like his aunt.
The girl laughed. “And it is your duty, I suppose, to protect lonely damsels from harm and ensure that they do nothing that is not seemly?”
Jack felt his cheeks redden. He didn’t like being mocked, and besides, why didn’t this girl act the demure way all women were expected to act here? She should be politely thanking him for his concern and waiting for him to offer to escort her back to the cantonment. Instead she was staring challengingly at him with those impenetrable eyes. Jack’s brain was turning to mush.
“It’s not safe,” he said lamely, “or proper.” Damn, there was his aunt again.
The smile faded from the girl’s eyes. “Let me tell you a story about proper. Do you know what this place is?” she asked, waving her arm to take in the building on the other side of the low wall.
Jack walked Australian forward and examined the scene. The rundown building consisted of two long structures facing a small courtyard that was visible through a pair of wide, wooden doors. The courtyard was empty except for a twisted old tree — a mulsoori tree, Jack guessed. The garden was surrounded by the low wall, but looked untended, the grass long and dry. About forty feet to one side a large banyan tree partially hid the stonework of a well.
“It’s the Bibighar,” the girl said.
“It’s deserted,” Jack observed.
“Now it is, but it wasn’t always. Long ago it was built by a British officer for his bibi—do you know what a bibi is?”
“Of course I do. My mother was one.”
The girl nodded in acknowledgment. “My grandmother also. So, you know how important bibis were in the early days here?”
Jack’s confused look encouraged her to continue. “The first British soldiers and traders left their wives and sweethearts at home. They took local wives—bibis.”
“Like the voyageurs did in Canada,” Jack interrupted.
“I suppose so. Anyway, the bibis taught the newcomers how to do things—how to stay cool in the heat, how to negotiate with local princes—it was a good arrangement but it was doomed. As the empire grew, more and more men began to bring their wives and families out here to live. As you can imagine, the wives did not take kindly to the bibis. These local wives were often abandoned with nothing.”
“My father took my mother to Canada West.”
“That was a brave solution, but it was not possible for everyone. One young officer built this place for his bibi. By all accounts she was very beautiful and he loved her dearly. He built her this house close to the river, with a courtyard and verandahs to catch the breeze. He even built it around her favourite mulsoori tree.
The arrangement suited the pair and, for many years, the officer and his bibi were happy. But, eventually, the officer was posted back to England. She begged to go with him, but the young man said no.”
“He can’t have loved her then,” Jack interrupted.
“Oh, but he did. That was why he decided to leave her behind. England is not Canada West. The officer knew that she would not survive either the harsh English climate or the even harsher drawing rooms of proper society. He believed he was doing the best thing.
“On the day the officer was due to leave, he came here to say farewell to his love. He found her hanging from the mulsoori tree. The officer was devastated and, so local legend has it, died of a broken heart on the voyage home.”
“That’s a terrible story.”
“It is.” The girl stood up on the low wall and mounted her pony. “Now you see the consequences of doing things the proper way.” She pulled her pony’s head around and walked back toward the cantonment.
“Wait,” Jack shouted. “I don’t know your name.”
“That’s because we haven’t been properly introduced,” the girl said with a laugh. She flicked her riding crop and her pony broke into a trot.
Jack stared after her until she disappeared behind the Old Cawnpore Hotel. He felt stunned. He had never met anyone like her before. She was nothing like the simpering daughters of the sahibs and memsahibs who giggled inanely and pretended to be utterly helpless whenever a male was near. She had opinions and spoke her mind—and she was beautiful. As beautiful as the bibi in her story, Jack wondered? His gaze wandered back to the Bibighar and the mulsoori tree. There was a thicker branch on its left side. That must be where she hanged herself. In Jack’s imagination she was still there, her body twisting mournfully in the breeze.
Tuesday, May 12—Tiffin
Jack didn’t feel like eating but attendance at tiffin was obligatory in his aunt’s house. In India two main meals were taken each day: breakfast early in the morning before it became too hot, and dinner, late in the evening after it had cooled down somewhat. The long gap between was bridged by a light snack—tiffin—usually taken in the early afternoon before everyone collapsed into heat-induced lethargy.
Two servants were employed full-time in attempting to keep the high-ceilinged dining room slightly cooler than the blistering heat outside. One walked around splashing water on the rattan blinds that covered all the windows while the other pulled the rope attached to the punkah, a large rectangle of canvas that swung back and forth to create a draft. It was all in vain. Jack was bathed in sweat despite having changed his clothes and washed after his morning ride.
Enough of the razor-sharp midday sunlight filtered in through the blinds to allow Jack to pick at the array of food set out on the broad, rosewood sideboard. He selected a thin slice of meat, a spoonful of leftover fish curry from the night before and a hard-boiled egg.
“Damned nonsense!” Uncle James exclaimed as Jack returned to the table. A folded copy of the Bengal Harkaru newspaper lay on the table beside him and he was poking excitedly at it with his fork.
“What is, dear?” Aunt Katherine asked from the opposite end of the table.
“This rubbish about the greased cartridges for the new rifled muskets. Apparently the sepoys are still refusing to bite them.”
“Why do they have to bite them?” Jack asked.
Uncle James looked up from stabbing his newspaper. Like almost every other European in India, he worked for the East India Company. Uncle James reported to the collector, Charles Hillersdon, which meant that he was one of the officials who travelled around the vast district collecting taxes. Apart from these journeys around the countryside, on which he often took Hari, it was not an exacting job and Uncle James had not kept himself in good condition. He was a large man to begin with, but the extra fat he carried made him look like a huge, slow-moving bear. His face was permanently red and sported a sprawling mustache and wide, mutton chop side whiskers. He seemed continually out of breath and always dressed in a formal suit to “maintain appearances.” The main consequence was that Jack had never seen his uncle not bathed in sweat. It stood out now on his fleshy face and ran in tiny rivers down his cheeks and neck to disappear beneath the stiff collar of his shirt.
“Got to break the cartridge paper to load. Otherwise the damned gunpowder won’t light,” he explained. “Biting the top off’s the fastest way, always has been. Problem is, these new Enfield muskets have grooves down the inside of the barrels. Apparently, it makes ’em more accurate—greater range and so forth—but it makes the cartridge a tight fit. Got to grease the cartridge to get it down the barrel.”
“But why won’t they bite them?” Jack continued.
“Some silliness about the grease being cow fat or pig fat or some such. They refuse to bite the cartridges because it will defile them.”
“But it will,” Jack exclaimed, remembering his conversations with Hari. “Cows are sacred to Hindus and pigs are unclean to Muslims.”
“Which only goes to show the primitive nature of the religions these fellows hold to. The sepoys are soldiers and must do as they are ordered. Otherwise the army’ll fall apart. If they’re ordered to bite the cartridges then bite them they must, cow fat or no.”
“But—”
Uncle James held up a hand to prevent Jack’s interruption. “Besides, they have been assured that the grease is from sheep. Some regiments have even been allowed to tear off the top of the cartridge rather than bite it. But still the nonsense goes on. Look what happened at Barrackpore in March.”
“What?”
“Oh, some chap, Pande his name was, attacked his officers. Been smoking too much opium, if you ask me.”
“But what did that have to do with the cartridges?” Jack encouraged his uncle.
“Well, this Pande claimed to have been incited to revolt by others who were afraid of losing their caste through biting the greased cartridges. Nothing was ever proved, but it’s odd, not one of the regiment went to their European officer’s aid, at least until they were threatened with being shot themselves. Disgraceful.”
“What happened to Pande?”
“He was hanged of course, and his entire regiment disbanded. Far too lenient, if you ask me. There has been trouble in other places, too, over the last few months—strange affairs. Needs a firm hand. A few sepoys blown from the mouths of the regimental cannons will stop all this nonsense.”
“That’s barbaric,” Jack said, shocked.
“Barbaric? We’re not the barbarians here, Jack, and discipline must be maintained. It’s the only thing these fellows understand. Let one away with something and they all want to try. They’re like a lot of children.”
“But you wouldn’t blow a naughty child from the mouth of a cannon!”
“It’s not the same.” An angry tone entered Uncles James’s voice. “You are new here. You don’t understand how things are done. When you’ve been here as long as I have, you will see things the way I do.”
“I doubt I will ever think it is right to blow men from cannons just because they feel their religion is threatened.”
“This conversation is at an end.” Uncle James pushed his chair back and rose. The servant who had stood behind him throughout the meal jumped back to avoid being hit.
“Katherine, see what you can do with this boy. I was perfectly prepared to take him in after your brother died, even if he is a half-caste, but I will not have him tell me I am wrong at my own dinner table. I am going to lie down.”
As Uncle James moved his large, sweaty bulk out of the room, he drew with him a flurry of scuttling servants.
“Don’t worry about him,” Aunt Katherine advised Jack. “The heat always bothers him. But he does have a point. A year is not a long time to get used to this country. You still have a lot to learn about how things are done. All that separates us from the savages is continuing to do things in the proper way. We must maintain appearances. You will see that eventually.”
Jack doubted he would but he didn’t want to argue with his aunt as well. “I think I’ll go and find Hari and practice my Hindi.”
A worried look crossed his aunt’s face. “Don’t spend too much time with that boy.”
“Why not? He’s teaching me things.”
“Yes, and learning is good, but he is an Indian and you are not. It will be difficult enough for you to fit in here with your colour of skin. If you spend too much time with the likes of the stable boy, word will spread that you have gone native and that lets everyone down.”
Jack frowned. Suddenly, he felt the urge to explain that he didn’t want to fit in with Aunt Katherine’s world. It was Hari’s world—with its exotic customs and traditions—that interested him. He opened his mouth to speak, but changed his mind. He was too hot and, in any case, it would do no good. Aunt Katherine was as set in her ways as Uncle James.
“I’ll be careful,” was all he said as he stood and retreated outside onto the verandah.
The heat hit Jack like a physical presence. It sucked the air from his lungs and the moisture from his skin, yet somehow it was less stifling than the cooler dining room he had shared with his aunt and uncle. Gasping, Jack moved round to the back of the house where Hari sat waiting for him.
“Namaste, Hari.” Jack placed his palms together and greeted his friend.
“Good afternoon, Jack Sahib,” Hari replied, nodding his head. “How was your morning ride?”
“Very good, thank you, Hari. I met someone.”
Hari inclined his head enquiringly.
Jack hesitated. He desperately wanted to talk about the strange girl he had met and how he felt about her, but was Hari the right person to confide in? He was a friend, but he was also a servant. Was it appropriate to talk about personal things with a servant? Clearly, Aunt Katherine and Uncle James didn’t think so. For the moment, Jack gave up trying to sort things out. He simply said, “She told me the story of the Bibighar.”
“Indeed, that is a most sad tale, sahib. Now, what is it you wish us to be learning today?”
“I wish you would learn to stop calling me sahib.” Jack sat down on the wooden floor. “I’m Jack, not Jack Sahib.”
“But it is a term of politeness and of respect.”
“Then I should call you Hari Sahib.”
Hari looked shocked. “No, Jack Sahib. I am but a lowly stable boy.”
“And I am just a half-caste orphan from Canada West.”
“But you are of the Raj. You are a ruler and deserving of respect.”
Jack gave up. Some things about this country couldn’t be changed.
“I remember some Hindi my mother taught me—
Humpty Dumpty bita me chat
Humpty Dumpty girgea fat
Rajah kigora
Ranee kinora
Humpty Dumpty cabinae jora.”
Hari looked puzzled. “It makes little sense, Jack Sahib.”
Jack laughed. “I know. It’s not supposed to. It’s about an egg that fell of a wall.”
“Why would a raja wish to mend a broken egg?”
“Actually, it wasn’t originally about an egg at all. Humpty Dumpty was a battering ram in a war in England many years ago. It was built to break down a city’s walls but it got stuck in a river and broke. Hundreds of soldiers died.”
“Why would your mother sing songs to a child about soldiers dying?”
“It’s not about soldiers dying. It’s a nursery rhyme.”
“The English are very strange. I do not think I shall ever be understanding them.”
“Sometimes I don’t understand them either,” Jack said with a smile. “But there is something I don’t understand here. Do you know about the new greased cartridges?”
Hari’s face went serious. “I do, Jack Sahib. It is not good.”
“You are always telling me things are not good, but I want to know more. Why are the sepoys refusing to bite the cartridges if they are not cow fat?”
“They are not trusting officers.”
“But why not? Many of the officers I have met are devoted to their men. They wouldn’t lie to them.”
“What you are saying is true. I knew one such in Lucknow before I came here one year ago—a Captain Moore. He was a most goodly man. From his own pocket, he was paying for me to go to school and learn the English. But many badmashes—undesirable persons of low character—from the bazaar have been spreading stories.”
“What kind of stories?”
“They say the big war in the Crimea killed all the British soldiers in England. There are none left but the few that are here and they could easily be killed.”
“That’s nonsense. There are thousands of soldiers still in England.”
Hari nodded his head enigmatically. “They are also saying that, because there are no soldiers left in England, the Little Queen will be sending all the young women to India to marry Brahman men, rob them of their caste and turn them into Christians.”
“But that’s crazy!”
“These are most difficult times. There is much craziness. Yesterday there was a holy man in the bazaar—a faqir —who talked most loudly of swords draped in gore and rooms full of blood. He was saying the feringhees would all soon be dead and India would be free once more. Many listened.”
“Feringhees?”
“You, sahib. All foreigners.”
Jack could picture the faqir, they were a common sight. Often they were naked and filthy, covered in white river clay and ashes. Their hair was long and matted with dirt and, Jack imagined, almost alive with all kinds of bugs. But the faqirs were revered. They had renounced all worldly things and devoted their lives to spiritual enlightenment. It was unusual for them to talk, let alone preach to a crowd.
“Why do they want us to leave? Aren’t we helping India become civilized?”
Hari shrugged. “The Vedas say that India was civilized while the feringhees still lived in caves.”
“Vedas?”
“The ancient books, sahib. They are so old no one knows who wrote them.”
“Do you want us to leave, Hari?”
“It is good to control one’s destiny.”
“But if the British had not come here, you would not have gone to school.”
“That is most true, but it was the kindness of one man, Captain Moore, that enabled my education, and there are good men among all peoples.”
“So you want us gone.”
“One day in peace. Not now in war. The British are not the worst of masters. I am not thinking that Nana Sahib is someone to be wished for.”
Jack was fascinated. This was as close as he had come to finding out how Hari felt about something and it might be a chance to express his own mixed feelings about the country. Despite the strangeness of the land, Jack was finding it more and more difficult to think of himself as a foreigner. He opened his mouth to continue the discussion, but Hari stood up.
“I must be attending to the horses. Thank you for this talk, Jack Sahib, it was a most interesting conversation.”
Jack shook his head as he watched Hari retreat across the garden. Despite all the time he spent in Hari’s company, India was still a mystery. Jack couldn’t help but feel that the land Hari described to him was nothing but a surface veneer that covered a wild and turbulent history stretching back into an unimaginably distant past.
Tuesday, May 12—Evening
The vultures sat in the regimented rows of trees beside the road like black-shawled prophets of doom. From their hunched shoulders, obscenely bald heads stretched forward on stringy necks and hungry eyes watched Jack as he rode past in the dusty evening light.
There was so much death in this land, Jack reflected, that the animals that lived off it—vultures and jackals on the land and crocodiles in the river—thrived. The first two didn’t bother him much, although their activities sometimes disgusted him. It was the crocodiles he feared. Everyone seemed to delight in telling him stories of people standing in waist-deep water suddenly screaming and disappearing beneath the surface. He had even heard of buffalo being dragged in while they were drinking. The thought of such a horrible fate coming at him unseen from beneath the brown water of the Ganges sent shivers down his spine. He much preferred the vultures along the road.
The Grand Trunk Road was quiet at this time of day. Gone was the bustle and noise of traders’ bullock carts, the clank and rattle of military columns, and the otherworldly shuffle of the skinny faqirs. Farmers made their way across the landscape toward mud-brick villages where thin columns of smoke already rose from cooking fires. The hubbub of India was quieting for a few hours.
Jack thought back over the day: the chapattis, the mysterious, beautiful girl at the Bibighar, the greased cartridges, Hari’s story of the unrest in the bazaar. There was no pattern to it, yet Jack felt a curious unease, as if something unpleasant were about to happen. He had heard stories of the village dogs acting oddly hours before an earthquake struck, as if they somehow sensed that the solid earth beneath them was about to act in a strange and dangerous way. Perhaps Jack was sensing some horrible wrench in the fabric of the ordered life of British India.
Nonsense. Jack shook his head to dispel his wild imaginings. It was just another evening, and a lovely one at that. Evening was Jack’s favourite time, but it was too short. In front of him, at the end of the tunnel of trees, the sun—blood red and huge—sat on the flat horizon, preparing to plunge the world into darkness.
Jack didn’t think he would ever get used to the speed with which the Indian day turned into night. One minute the sun was beating down with malevolent fury and he had to squint against its harsh glare. Then it was gone. There was a brief softening of the light, a short period of semi-dark and suddenly the stars leapt out of the blackness. It was all so different from the long gentle twilights he was used to in Canada West where the day seemed to pass regretfully into night.
Thoughts of cool evening rides through the Canadian woods with a brace of grouse or a small deer thrown over the saddle in front of him tugged at Jack’s emotions. Not a day went past when he didn’t achingly miss that earlier life—the quiet woods and empty spaces that were the opposite of this strident, teeming land. He felt sharp tears sting the corners of his eyes. It wasn’t fair! Why did his parents have to die? Why did he have to be sent off to this alien place where vultures were as common as crows?
Jack had always been a loner. There hadn’t been much choice in sparsely-populated Canada West, but here he felt alone in the middle of thousands of people. He had so little in common with any of them. Sometimes he enjoyed that, taking pride in being different, but deep down he knew the real reason for his lonely existence was the colour of his skin.
Most European women and children in India kept out of the sun and treasured an alabaster complexion. Jack’s skin marked him as Eurasian—a half-caste, destined never to completely fit in with either society. But then so was the girl he had met this morning. Perhaps the two of them—
“’Ey, Jackie boy! ’Old up.” A strong cockney accent of East End London broke into Jack’s dreams, making him rein in. Coming up the road was a soldier. He wore the red uniform of a subaltern in the Fifty-third Native Infantry Regiment and he was mounted on a cavalry horse, much larger than Australian.
“Hello, Tommy,” Jack said with a smile as the man drew level.
Tommy Davies was seven years older than Jack but he looked more. Almost ten years of army life in the uncompromising climates of India and the Crimea had weathered his skin to the texture of old leather. Only his pale blue eyes, sparkling beneath dark brows, still appeared young.
Tommy was one of the few Europeans in Cawnpore with whom Jack felt a kinship. Like Jack, he didn’t fit in. His father owned a fishmonger’s shop in London and Tommy himself had a strong accent. This made him “common” and unlike most of the upper-class officers in the Indian Army. Despite the odds, Tommy had done well. As a boy in his father’s shop, gutting and cleaning fish at a cold marble slab, Tommy had dreamed of adventure. In 1844, when he was only ten, he ran away from home to join the navy and become a cabin boy on Sir John Franklin’s great Arctic adventure. His father captured him before he could sign his life away and Tommy was eternally grateful that he had: not a single member of Franklin’s expedition survived to return home from the icy north.
Luckily, Tommy’s father recognized that he could not force his son to do what he did not want, so he worked with him—saving every penny and begging favours from his upper-class customers—to get a cadet scholarship to Addiscombe Military College. In the proudest moment of his life so far, Tommy graduated as a subaltern in the summer of 1848, just in time to be shipped to India and contribute to the victory against the Sikhs at the Battle of Chillianwala the following year. Then there were wars in Burma and the Crimea. Tommy had done a lot of soldiering in a short time.
“Gawd, look at them letters!” Tommy said.
“Look at what?”
“Letters. Letters and words—birds. You don’t know nuffink.” Most of the time, Tommy tried hard to hide his accent, but he had particular trouble stopping himself from replacing “th” in the middle of a word with “ff” or dropping the “h” at the beginning of a word. On top of that, he often exaggerated his accent when he was with Jack. He took particular pride in torturing his friend with the impossible to follow rhyming slang that he had grown up with.
“Sometimes,” Jack said, shaking his head, “it seems as if you’re using a different language. Hindi is easier than that mess you speak.”
“I say, old chap,” Tommy said, affecting a cultured voice that sounded as if he had a mouthful of plums. “That’s a bit thick, what!”
The pair laughed as they set off along the road.
“But seriously,” Tommy said, “Those birds give me the creeps. They look as if they know someffink we don’t.”
“What bothers me,” Jack replied, “is that they are so plump. There must be a lot of dead things around to keep this many vultures well-fed.”
“It’s them Hindus, burning bodies down by the river. The poor folk can’t afford enough wood to do the job proper, so they just turf what’s left into the water. Not often vultures and crocodiles get a cooked meal, eh?”
“That’s disgusting!”
“But true. I took a boat down and had a butcher’s last week.” Tommy smiled at Jack’s puzzled frown. “Butcher’s hook—look.”
“You’re not supposed to.”
“I know, but everyone does. We got in so close to the pyre that the mourners were starting to wave us away. Strangest thing—the body in the middle of the blaze sat up.”
“What?”
“Sat bolt upright as if it was about to ask for a nice cool drink of water.”
“That’s not possible,” Jack said incredulously.
Tommy laughed. “Cap’n Moore says it ’appens all the time. Someffink to do with the heat making the tendons contract—jerks the body right up. I tell you, we didn’t need any encouragement to scarper after that.”
The pair rode in silence for a while as they thought about Tommy’s story. Eventually, they turned off onto a dirt track that led past the European barracks to the Sati Chowra Ghat and the Europeans’ bungalows.
“Do you like it here?” Jack asked.
“Oh, it ain’t South Downs nor Hyde Park, that’s for sure, and it’s either dreadfully hot or pouring rain, but there’s worse places. Take the Crimea for instance—disease, muddle and nonsense everywhere. If it ’adn’t been for the bravery of the common soldier, we’d never ’ave won that war. But at least there was some excitement there, not like ’ere where we sit around in the ’eat and dust sweating our lives away.”
“There might be some excitement here yet. There’s some strange things happening.”
“That’s true enough,” Tommy responded. “The natives are restless over these new greased cartridges. But, if you ask me, there’s always someffink strange in this land. No need to worry, though. The army ’as everyffink under control. ’Sides, General Wheeler says the native regiments are staunch.”
“Staunch? Where are you picking up the fancy language? And since when has General Wheeler confided in a fishmonger’s son?”
Tommy coloured at the reference to his background. “That’s rich coming from an ’alf-caste. I’ll ’ave you know that my dad is the best fishmonger in Whitechapel. He supplies fresh fish to the Earl of Sutton Regis.”
“All right,” Jack said hurriedly, ignoring the dig at his mixed heritage. “Don’t get upset. I’m not one of those snobs who’s impressed by the Earl of this or that. But you must admit, General Wheeler isn’t in the habit of inviting lowly subalterns to tiffin.”
Tommy relaxed with a laugh. “True enough, but I didn’t ’ear it from ’im. I ’eard it from Cap’n Moore”
“Who is this Captain Moore everyone seems to be talking about?”
“’E came in with the squad of regulars from Lucknow at the beginning of the month. You must ’ave seen him about—that tall, fair-haired Irishman. Anyway, ’e is the opposite of ol’ Wheeler. The ol’ general has got cautious in his dotage. Moore is a right firebrand, ‘e is. Says we should disarm the sepoy regiments before there’s any trouble.”
“Is there going to be trouble?”
“Naw. It’s all just fuss and bother. It’ll blow over. But it wouldn’t hurt to take precautions.”
“Such as?”
“Disarming the regiments, for one. Maybe preparing the magazine on the edge of town for defence. That place is a fortress. With enough food we could hold out there for months.”
“Hold on! What are you talking about?”
“Nuffink. Just soldier’s talk. We’re always preparing for the next battle. Usually never comes. Still an’ all, can’t hurt to be prepared.”
“I’m sure General Wheeler has everything under control.”
“I’m sure he ’as,” Tommy replied. The two lapsed back into silence.
General Sir Hugh Massey Wheeler was one of the most senior officers in India. In fifty years of service, he had fought against Sikhs and Afghans and earned the nickname “Attack” for the wild charges he had led in his youth. But he had never been given the high honours and position he warranted in his old age. In the eyes of the fussy establishment, General Wheeler was tainted in much the same way as Jack. The general’s wife, Frances, was Eurasian; her father had been white and her mother Indian.
“I met a girl this morning,” Jack said.
“Well done, me lad. About time you discovered some delicate flower of the cantonment and settled down. What’s ’er name?”
“I don’t know. I was riding past the Bibighar and she was sitting on the wall. She told me a story.”
“That’s very nice,” Tommy said. “But ’er name would ’elp.”
“She was beautiful.”
“Well, that’s all right, then. Just put a notice in the India Gazette: wanted, beautiful girl to tell stories—piece o’ cake.”
“You don’t take anything seriously, do you?”
“Only proper things to worry about in the army are keeping your powder dry and your boots clean.”
Jack burst out laughing.
“What’s so funny?”
“Proper was what the story was about,” Jack said getting himself under control. “That’s Aunt Katherine’s favourite word. Meals must be eaten at the proper time, servants must be treated in a proper way and proper clothes must be worn for every occasion.” Jack pulled his shoulders back and perfectly mimicked his aunt’s high-pitched voice, “Doing the proper thing is what distinguishes us from the savages. Sometimes I despair of ever making anything worthwhile of you, Jack O’Hara. I don’t know what my brother, God rest his soul, was thinking. First, he up and marries a bibi, and then, as soon as you are born, he take off to the wilds of the North American colonies. I fear it has ruined you for ever becoming a gentleman. There is too much of the savage in you.”
“I’ve often thought that meself,” Tommy said with a smile. “I may be a fishmonger’s son, but you are a savage.”
“I’m not alone.” Jack laughed. “To Aunt Katherine, savages include anyone not brought up in England. I fear I lie too far on the wrong side of the proper-savage line to ever be redeemed.”
Tommy pulled out his watch from the fob pocket in his uniform jacket, flipped open the cover and carefully looked at the time. Jack smiled. The sun was setting at the same time as it had last night but Tommy loved his watch and examined it at every opportunity. It had been a gift from his father on his last leave, just before he boarded the boat for India back in January. The outer case was engraved with a hunting scene of hounds bringing down a stag, and Tommy’s name and the date of his departure were engraved inside the case. Jack knew how long and hard a fishmonger would have to work to afford a watch like that.
“Do you sleep with that under your pillow?” Jack asked.
“What, me kettle?”
“I know that one,” Jack said. “Kettle and hob—fob—watch.”
“We’ll make a cockney of you yet, me ol’ china plate. You see if we don’t.”
“China plate’s mate?” Jack asked, but Tommy was distracted, looking over at a squad of sepoys in their red coats and black trousers, lounging beside the track. They saluted Tommy as he rode past.
“They looked staunch,” Jack commented with a laugh when they were out of earshot.
“They did,” Tommy replied, seriously. “But did you notice? Some of them saluted with their left ’ands. That’s a sign of disrespect. I shall ’ave to report them when I return.”
“What’s all the fuss about these new greased cartridges?” Jack asked. “I’ve heard the Hindus say the grease is cow fat and will defile them and the Muslims say it is pork grease and against their religion. Are they right?”
“I don’t know. The official story is that it’s sheep fat, but I don’t think it makes any difference. The general’s told them they don’t have to bite the end off the cartridge to load their muskets, tearing the end off will work just as well. So, nuffink’s going to happen. It will all blow over and the dull life of this place will go on forever.”
“And you will marry the general’s daughter and become just as fossilized as all the rest. Why, you’ll even become a mighty general yourself.”
“That’s my dream—why I joined the army: to become a mighty general like the Duke of Wellington or even ol’ Wheeler.”
“I don’t think a fishmonger’s son has ever made general.”
“Then I’ll be the first. No fishmonger’s son ever came first in his class at Addiscombe either—until me. The army’s me life. I work ’ard at it. I’ve read Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul and von Clausewitz’s On War. Then, after a long life winning dramatic battles against savage hordes, I will ’ave a Viking funeral.”